Uncertainty
by Shadow2020
Summary: Natasha gets a late night visit from Steve, but nothing is ever simple for Avengers. I don't want to give away too much. It was an idea that came to me and I wanted to see if I could flesh it out. The title is key to this story. Set after some time after CA: TWS, not Civil War compliant


Standard disclaimer: I do not own Marvel, Disney, or these characters, nor am I profiting from them...

 **Uncertainty**

A slight disturbance in the silent hotel room awakened Natasha. She lay in the dark, feigning sleep but actually searching for threats, her hand slowly reaching for the gun she kept beneath her pillow. She was certain she was not alone in the room, and she readied herself for the fight to come. It was always like that for her; never able to lower her guard except for a few rare moments in her blood drenched life. It was something the Avengers never seemed able to grasp, being a spy wasn't a game; it was a life. The stakes for being sloppy were quite lethal. In a way she was glad they didn't get it; that they lived in a friendlier world than she did. If she couldn't live there herself at least her friends could. Friends; now that was a thing she never thought she would have...

"Nat?" The voice was so soft she half thought she imagined it, even with her senses at their maximum. She stiffened. There was only one person who called her that, and there was no way He could be here.

Most people in her profession called her the Black Widow. In Shield, she had gone by Agent Romanoff. Fury just called her Romanoff, Clint called her Tasha. Only Steve Rogers had taken to calling her 'Nat', and indeed, he was the only one she allowed to call her by the fond diminutive. Yet even as she felt annoyance rising that the intruder had dared to use such a private name, she began to notice other things; the smell of old fashioned cologne, the subtle sound of relaxed breathing, and her nerves relaxed ever so slightly.

"Steve?" she asked in a whisper. She could not make out his form, but his voice seemed to come from the location of the only chair in the simple box of a room.

"Sorry to wake you." His voice sounded sober and a touch introspective.

She reached up and turned on the light switch on the wall, but nothing happened. They remained in the dark. It could just be the poor wiring of the cheap hotel she was staying in, or it could be a prelude to attack.

"Steve, what are you doing here? How did you find me? Your skills must be improving, or I'm getting sloppy," she said, her hand closing on the handle of the Glock. While she had absolute faith in Steve, the possibility of someone posing as him to get an advantage over her was too high to ignore.

He chuckled quietly. "I'm here because I wanted to talk to you."

She could all but hear the faint smile.

"You don't have to worry about losing your edge," he said, "Showing up like this is a one-time thing."

"It had better be. Sneaking in and out of locked rooms at night is my gig, Rogers, and you better remember it." She paused. "So you're responsible for the lights?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," he answered. "People could see if they were on."

"You are getting better at breaking and entering in your old age, Rogers," she teased, but had not yet loosened her hold on the gun.

"Well, I've had a good teacher," he countered, but his voice had a sad note at the end. "Go ahead; ask me something only I would know."

Her breath caught for a moment, then a slight smirk tugged at her lips. He wanted to play spy games did he? Well, who was she to say no to that?

"You remember what I told you when we buried Fury?" she asked.

"Kind of pointless burying someone who's not dead, but you told me I 'should be honored, that it was as close as he ever came to saying 'thank you''," he answered, his voice a whisper in the dark room.

Well that settled it; there was no way anybody else knew that. She released her hold on the Glock.

"You remember our conversation in the truck?" he asked softly.

She nodded, then realizing that even he could not likely see it stated. "Of course I do."

"I think about it sometimes. Sometimes I wish I had answered differently, but the truth is I wasn't ready..."

Natasha wondered for a moment if that was why the lights were off. She half chuckled at the thought he might be wearing a suit and holding flowers, here to romance her, but after a moment's thought realized that didn't fit the virtuous captain.

"Weren't ready for what? What would you have asked for?" she inquired, shifting in the bed, half afraid of the answer, yet something told her that was not where this was going.

"Sometimes I wished I had asked you to be my best girl," he said honestly, and surprisingly, without becoming flustered.

"I don't think either of us was ready for that," she answered evenly.

"No, probably not. You've been a good friend, Nat. I wish I could have been as good a friend to you…"

"What do you mean? Steve, asking me to be your friend was one of the highest points of my life. It was the hardest thing anyone ever asked me to be, and the best. It was the most selfless thing you could have asked for," she told him, suddenly wishing she could make out his face in the dark room.

"But I haven't been a good friend to you, have I? I left right after that to try to save Bucky, I wasn't there to help you with what you were going through," he countered.

"I needed time. It was a lot of change all at once, even for those of us not in our nineties," she joked; then serious again, "but I knew I had someone I could go back to, and someone to have my back if I needed it, that helped a lot more than you know."

"Not enough," he said, "you still see yourself as a monster. What kind of friend have I been if you still believe that? Nat, I've fought monsters, real ones- believe me you are not one. If I had one last chance to convince you of anything it would be that."

"You don't know all the things I've done, Steve. If you knew you wouldn't say that," her voice was emotionless.

"Nat, I do know what you've done. What you were made to do," he sighed. "Fury showed me your file a few months after we started working together. His personal file, not the Shield one," he added.

She looked up in shock. "Fury showed it to you?" That was hard to believe. Fury kept everything close to his chest, the man's secrets had secrets... but he had given the flash drive containing Hydra's secrets to Steve and not to her or anyone else in Shield. People had a way of trusting Captain America, and even Fury was not immune.

"Yeah, said he didn't want me to stumble into that material on my own in the rumor mill... He also told me that you had his full confidence, and that Peggy was the one who approved you for field duty."

Natasha's mind raced at lightning speed and she realized she could guess the day he must have found out. She had assumed at the time he had overheard agents talking about her, and to head it off she had asked if he wanted to ask her something. He had declined, but had been stiffer and more wary of her after that, though still strictly polite. It was a wariness that had not completely faded until the fall of Shield. She hadn't guessed he was actually working through her entire past; that he had had a far better understanding of who she was than she expected.

"And knowing all that, you still asked me to be your friend?" she asked in a small voice, it seemed impossible to believe.

"Not at first, no. But the day Fury 'died' your mask of the perfect agent was torn and underneath I saw someone who had been working their hardest for redemption, only to see it ripped away from them... monsters don't seek redemption, they see no need of it."

"You know, you might be in the wrong business," she stated softly.

"I'm in the business of protecting people, and I was where I needed to be."

"You were, weren't you?" she said, a grin tugging at her lips. Her smart phone chimed, the tune let her know Clint was calling her.

"Don't answer that."

His soft voice caused her to pause, her hand over the screen. Warnings sounded in her brain.

"Steve what is going on? Are you in trouble?" It seemed preposterous for him to be in trouble, yet why else would he not want her to answer?

"If you answer I'll have to go, and I don't know when I'll have the chance to see you again."

There was a forced casual note in his voice, something was definitely off here. "Why Steve? What did you do this time?" she demanded.

He breathed out. "I can't explain now, it's complicated… I just..." he paused. "I just want a chance to talk with you."

The earnestness of his voice calmed her concerns. She dismissed the call and set down her phone. "Then lets talk," she said lightly.

They chatted about a variety of subjects, Natasha subtly steering the topics to see if she could learn what had inspired his unexpected visit. She got nothing; the other Avengers all seemed to be fine. So why was he here? But despite the lack of progress she felt herself relax. It had been too long since they had done this. Not that they had ever had a conversation in the dark before, but she realized how much she missed teasing him, and adding things to his list when he wasn't looking. As soon as she finished her project here in Russia, she was going back to Avenger Tower. They were a weakness, she knew, her enemies could try to exploit that, but while a life without connections to people may be a good way not to die, it was a poor way to live. He had gone a long way toward helping her see that.

Her phone rang again. Almost an hour had passed, and it was Clint again. The alarm in her mind sounded. She started to reach for her phone.

"Nat, not yet," his voice asking her to delay.

"Either you tell me what's going on, or I'm answering this phone." She took his silence as her answer and took the call. "What is it Clint?" she asked in her customary offhanded tone.

"Tasha, are you alright? I've been trying to reach you," he asked, his voice clearly troubled.

"Yeah, I'm fine, what's wrong?" she demanded. Her stomach felt a distinct sinking feeling. "Did something happen to the team?"

"The team is fine Tasha, it's Cap…" his voice broke off.

"What did he do this time?" she asked, eyeing the corner of her room, wishing she could see his reaction.

"We went on a mission to rescue hostages... it came up quickly, there was no time for you to get here... we went in, saved the hostages, everything was fine until the way out... it was a set up, they had snipers on the rooftop and Steve... they shot him Tasha, we didn't see it coming until too late," Hawkeye's voice sounded choked.

Natasha lay stunned at what she was hearing, the phone slipping from her ear. Then her training took over. One hand went to her gun, the other to the lamp beside her bed and switched on the light. The light illuminated the small room banishing the uncertainty of the shadows. The room was the same as before with peeling white paint, the door latched from inside, a small barred window looking out on a poorly paved street, a single empty chair with worn fabric sat in the corner. The room was exactly as she had left it. No-one could have entered or exited without her knowing.

"...Tasha...?" Clint's disturbed voice came from the forgotten phone.

Ignoring the phone, she got up swiftly and walked to the window, pushing back the tired curtains, she heard a cat in the distance. She looked down; there were no signs of any footprints in the snow. She hurriedly searched the room but came up empty handed, and slowly went back to the phone.

"Tasha, are you still there?" Clint's voice was clearly worried.

"I'm… I'm here," she answered. "What is... what is his condition?" she managed.

"He... he didn't make it... he was pronounced dead on the scene..."

"When? When did it happen?" she interrupted hurriedly.

"A little over an hour ago, he... he didn't suffer, he was helping one of the civilians when they opened up on us, one moment he was fine and then..." Clint choked off.

An hour ago; the same time a noise had woken her from her sleep. An hour ago she had had no idea what had happened half a world away.

"And the shooter?" she asked, her mouth dry as dust.

"Escaped. They must have been planning this for some time Tasha," Hawkeye told her.

A small part of her brain acknowledged this, another part already making a list of the things she would need to hunt down and execute her captain's murderer. Her life was drenched in blood, but she would have no qualms with adding the blood of whoever had done this to the many she had killed before.

"...I can come to you." Clint had been talking and she realized she didn't know what he had been saying.

"No, I'm coming back, be ready," she told him; he would know what that meant. She was an assassin, a killer, and an Avenger. Today she would not mind being any of those things. She ended the call and quickly dressed and gathered her weapons from their hiding places around the room. Then she stopped, and, staring at the chair in the corner of the room.

"Steve?" her voice wavered slightly. "…Steve?" There was no reply, not this time, and maybe never again. Tears came to her eyes. Tears were a sign of weakness, but she allowed them to stay for a moment. Then she brushed them away. She was not a monster, but she was an avenger. She walked out and let the door close on the small empty room.


End file.
